Coke to extend Fanta brand with new fruit-based fizzy drink

The company said it will have more offerings to extend the Fanta brand and widen its footprint.MUMBAI: Heeding Prime Minister Narendra Modi's call for more fruits-based drinks, Coca-Cola will pilot-launch a new Fanta variant at the 'Make in India' week beginning here tomorrow.

Called the Fanta Green Mango, which is a juice-based fizzy drink, the move is aimed at extending the Fanta brand and help the farming community.

The company said it will have more offerings to extend the Fanta brand and widen its footprint.

"Anchored in an Indian taste profile, the new product will extend the Fanta portfolio, widen its footprint and connect with consumers better," Coca-Cola India Vice-President, Marketing and Commercial, Debabrata Mukherjee said here today.

"We are looking at other offerings as well that are completely homegrown," he added.

Last year, Modi had called upon multinationals to add fruit juices to their drinks to help farmers increase sales.

"We are already helping four lakh farmers here and are the largest buyers of Indian fruit pulps including mango, guava and litchi. Between local use and exports of fruit juices and pulps, we buy Rs 4,000 crore worth of inputs from farmers here," Coca-Cola India President Venkatesh Kini said.

"Fanta Green Mango is our first foray, and we are hoping it will open a whole new segment and create more demand," he added.

The new product will be available in Delhi-NCR to begin with, and will initially retail through e-commerce platform Grofers, and will be priced at Rs 30 for a 300ml can.

While Kini declined to comment on the suspension of production in three bottling plants, he clarified that the company is "consolidating production", which is affected by demand-supply mismatches.

"The rural economy has been affected by two consecutive bad monsoons, and that has impacted the entire industry, including us, but that said, we had double digit growth in the fourth quarter fuelled by innovation, and India continues to be a growing market for us," he said.

In the last three years, the company has put up six greenfield projects for juice and sparkling drinks, and four new greenfield projects are in the offing, he said.